Food Bazaar Supermarket
Opened: October 18, 2024
Buckle up for a big weekend! Today and tomorrow, we'll be taking a look at eleven brand-new or newly-renovated stores (and the full list is at the bottom of this post). We're starting with two of the acquired Food Bazaar locations converted from Stop & Shop in the last several weeks. First, let's see what's going on at Piscataway, which opened in mid-October.
The store has been fully set up (well okay, mostly) but strangely, it's still not really on the Food Bazaar program. There are minimal storebrands -- some Bogopa, Food Bazaar's own brand, but minimal selections of other brands. I saw only a few Seven Farms products, the organic brand distributed by Food Bazaar's distributor Bozzuto's, and no Life Every Day or Life Goods (also from Bozzuto's) or Field Day (an organic/natural brand from UNFI). I assume those will be added eventually, but I do wonder why they're not here yet. The produce department was really terrible, and maybe I was just here on a bad day but the selection is noticeably smaller than other Food Bazaars with much worse quality. It didn't help that the store still feels like a rundown Stop & Shop.
Still, Food Bazaar has started making some improvements. The deli has been fully reopened, as it was reduced in size when Stop & Shop was here. There still isn't much in the way of the prepared foods counters, though, which remained mostly empty. We'll see what Food Bazaar does with all that space.
Meanwhile, the service seafood counter is open. On my last visit -- from the store's second day of operation -- it had been set up but wasn't yet fully stocked. Still, it's far from the usual Food Bazaar selection. For instance, there was only one kind of salmon (regular, farm raised salmon fillets). At other Food Bazaars, I'm accustomed to seeing at least one other option (Faroe Islands salmon, wild caught salmon, king salmon, something else).
The grocery aisles are extremely clean and well-stocked -- much cleaner than when Stop & Shop was here -- but the aging facility stands out. I know it's a slow process, and Food Bazaar is basically renovating 10% of its store base at one time (4 of the approximately 40 stores), but still I think the sooner they can get working on these stores, the better. This store and Carlstadt are still a long ways away from better stores like Fairfield Avenue, also a former Stop & Shop.
Food Bazaar has added an impressive selection of international foods to the grocery aisles, but again it seems like there's an issue: there are large Latin American, European, and Eastern Asian sections, but no Indian foods. In a town where 22% of the population is Indian American, that seems like a major oversight.
You can get a sense here in the pet foods aisle, though, of just how pristine they've kept the store. Still, it needs a lot of work.
Much of the former nonfoods department is now international foods and sale items, as we see here. HABA has been condensed to one or two aisles.
And international foods now occupy most of the former HABA department. Interestingly, it looks like they're still using a lot of the same fixtures.
But it also feels like this store is too big for Food Bazaar, with large sections filled with small appliances and other unusual items. (At 65,000 square feet, it's not at all too big; multiple locations are larger than this, some significantly so.)
The back half of the former HABA aisles is Asian foods, with the nonfood items in the front. I have to assume this setup is temporary, because it doesn't really make much layout sense.
One of the former HABA aisles is now full of hardware and other random home goods. This must be a space filler, because this isn't in any other Food Bazaar I know of.
The aisle previously used for cosmetics is now completely empty, again making me think this whole setup is still in progress. Most Food Bazaar stores don't sell cosmetics; Fairfield Avenue does but in a smaller section in front of the registers.
The new Food Bazaar aisle markers look completely out of place here.
And for the time being, while Food Bazaar hasn't yet made big changes to the store's appearance, there are still plenty of clues from the previous tenant. Check out the hand-washing signs in the bathrooms...
Carlstadt was a nicer store to begin with, and kept up better by Stop & Shop. It converted to Food Bazaar two weeks before Piscataway, and so its renovation has begun sooner. It looks like the grocery shelving here might not be replaced, but another shelf has been added to the top of each aisle for storage. You can also see that the ceiling is getting a paint job to the typical dark brown, and the flooring is being removed in favor of polished concrete.
No fixtures have been updated yet (some will probably be changed, others might remain and just get a paint job) but we can see the store starting to come together. Notice that the painters of the ceiling weren't particularly careful with the edges -- what looks like dirt or dust is actually brown paint on the walls -- so it's clear the walls will be painted eventually. We'll see how extensive the new decor is, because it could be a relatively minor remodel like Flatbush, or a bigger one like Fairfield Avenue.
The grocery aisles are looking a bit more like a Food Bazaar by now, but the Stop & Shop shelving remains.
Here, too, HABA aisles have been switched to international foods.
In the front corner, there are still no apparent plans for the former pharmacy, which appears to currently be used for storage.
Opened: October 18, 2024
Owner: Spencer An
Previous Tenants: Edwards > Stop & Shop
Cooperative: none
Location: 581 Stelton Rd, Piscataway, NJ
Photographed: November 9, 2024
Well, I'll be back to check out this store as it's redone, but for the time being I don't think running a more-expensive Stop & Shop with bad produce and limited center-store items is exactly a winning formula. Still, Food Bazaar is generally a great operator, so I have to assume they'll nail down all the many issues with these acquisitions soon enough. Let's head over to Carlstadt, where they suffer from some of the same problems but things are starting to turn around.
Food Bazaar Supermarket
Opened: October 4, 2024
Owner: Spencer An
Previous Tenants: Grand Union > Stop & Shop
Cooperative: none
Location: 675 Paterson Ave, Carlstadt, NJ
Photographed: November 8, 2024
I'll be back to both of these stores as the renovations continue! Here's the full roundup of this weekend's posts, today:
- Renovations progress at the Carlstadt Food Bazaar while the Piscataway location has yet to start (this post)
- City Supermarkets is almost done renovating their new location in Kenilworth
- Most closed Stop & Shop stores remain vacant, including a location in Edison
- An independent grocer near Paterson has completed a renovation
- Over in Passaic, the exterior of a SuperFresh is getting a major rebuild
And tomorrow:
I wasn’t surprised to find this store on the chopping block; I knew a lot of people that worked there and most were okay with it, but they didn’t like the fact that the store was so dead. I mean, even when it was GU it had problems drawing customers, and that’s when its only real competition was the outdated A&P in Wallington and the old Acme in East Rutherford that they didn’t seem to give a whole lot of care to.
ReplyDeleteAgreed, and interesting to hear about the background in the GU times. It doesn't look like Food Bazaar has managed to meaningfully increase the volume here (yet?) but we'll see as they continue to redo it and change how the store is run.
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